TV Writers

People who write for TV are people too. It is hard to see them as people, just as it might have been hard growing up in Ancient Greece to think of slaves as people, even if you happened to be a very altruistic Greek citizen, like Thucydides. That’s why I like to imagine a future in which animals are respected as much as people. Because then I am able to respect a TV writer. My mother taught me to respect animals. I can say that I love our old cat, but I can’t say I respect her as a human. Sometimes when I get drunk I say nasty things to her because she doesn’t know the difference, whereas I never say anything nasty to my mother. However, it is not easy when you are around a TV writer for long periods of time to remember any of this difficult wisdom. It’s like meeting a cute dog with mange. You want to cuddle it, but you don’t want mange, so you just stare into its sad eyes and warn it to keep away, as though it’s a human with mange. It’s hard to remember that there are so many cute dogs in this world who don’t have mange.